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The Northern Hub is a rail project across Northern England to increase train services and reduce journey times between the major cities and towns by electrifying lines and removing a major rail bottleneck in Manchester. It is predicted to stimulate economic growth in the region. The rail network in Manchester was a bottleneck preventing seamless and fast services between cities and towns in the north of England. There are many points to the project, however the prime point centred on eradicating the Manchester bottleneck allowing trains to travel through Manchester at speed without stopping. The project was announced in 2009 as the Manchester Hub.〔 The project has a steering partnership involving Network Rail, Deutsche Bahn, First TransPennine Express, Northern Rail, East Midlands Trains, CrossCountry, Freightliner, the Department for Transport, Transport for Greater Manchester and Merseytravel. Services from Liverpool to Leeds and beyond will be diverted from the diesel operated Liverpool to Manchester line southern route via Warrington Central and Manchester Piccadilly to the more direct electrified Liverpool to Manchester northern route via Newton-le-Willows and Manchester Victoria, giving a fast route to and through Manchester. The construction of two through platforms at Manchester Piccadilly will allow 14 trains per hour as against the previous 10. Manchester Victoria station was modernised and completed in October 2015 adopting the role of an east-west rail interchange and through station between Liverpool and Leeds. Trains from the north east of England to Manchester Airport will use a reinstated section of railway, the £85 million Ordsall Chord, between Manchester Victoria and Manchester Oxford Road to access Manchester Piccadilly and continue to the airport without the need to reverse at Piccadilly and without conflicting movements of other trains at the station throat. The Manchester Hub Study, outlining the project, was released by Network Rail in February 2010. Costs were estimated at £530 million, subsequently reassessed to £560 million.〔 Chancellor George Osborne approved expenditure of £85 million for the new track link in his budget on 23 March 2011, and other aspects of the scheme were reviewed to ensure best value. A further £130 million was committed in Osborne's budget of March 2012, and approval for the full scheme was confirmed by the government on 16 July 2012. The first trains are expected to run on the new linking track in 2016 and the project completed by 2018.〔(£560m Northern Hub rail scheme approved ), ''Insider News North West'', 16 July 2012〕 Support for the scheme has been vociferous from civic and business leaders due to the high benefit-to-cost ratio and from politicians such as Chancellor George Osborne but criticised for being incremental and only improving the rail network in Northern England to "where it should have been a decade ago". The scheme has a benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) of £4 for every £1 invested - double that of London's Crossrail and the proposed national HS2 network which have a BCR of £2.10 and £2.30 respectively. The project may be superseded by or merged with High Speed 3. In November 2015 Transport for the North (TfN) proposed a four-track trans-Pennine railway line that would link with the HS2 line to London, and a new Liverpool-Manchester airport-Manchester railway line also linked to HS2. A feasibility study of the west to east rail line and its branches into HS2 will be published in March 2016. ==Background== The Northern Hub was proposed in February 2010 to resolve recurring problems around Manchester city centre which restricted route capacity and frequently caused delays. *Terminating trains in through platforms as opposed to terminal platforms at Manchester Victoria station removed capacity for trains passing through Manchester. The problem could have been mitigated by an additional terminating platform west of the station but operational efficiencies were achieved by altering route paths to relieve congestion. *Congestion at Manchester Piccadilly was caused by trains having to reverse to travel on to Manchester Airport and trains between Liverpool and Yorkshire or the East Midlands had to switch lines across the throat of the station temporarily blocking all other services. *Freight trains pass through Manchester city centre, unusual for a city centre rail network. Currently two freight trains per hour pass through Manchester to Trafford Park and no alternative route exists. Freight trains using passenger routes through Manchester was raised in Parliament in 2002. Network Rail concluded that no single intervention would unlock the bottlenecks but that greater efficiency and enhancement to services was possible. A proposal to use Piccadilly primarily for north-south services and Victoria for east-west services was agreed as the most effective course of action. The re-alignment of services commenced in May 2014 when TransPennine Express services between Liverpool Lime Street and Newcastle Central were routed through Manchester Victoria rather than Manchester Piccadilly. It is expected most TransPennine Express services will pass through Victoria by 2018 after the construction of the Ordsall Chord. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Northern Hub」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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